Before Dieting...

Bronwyn Fletcher
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Investigating Weight Regain Before You Try to Fix It. If you've spent years losing weight, regaining it, and wondering why the same pattern keeps repeating, this podcast is for you. Before Dieting is an investigative podcast from the Weighting for Happiness Project. Using women's experiences as a starting point, each episode investigates a different part of the weight ecosystem, revealing connections between seemingly unrelated experiences and the way we eat. Each episode replaces judgement with understanding, helping you see familiar experiences in a completely different way. The Weighting for Happiness Project is built on one simple distinction: Weight loss and weight regain are different problems. Many women have proved they can lose weight. The unanswered question is what keeps recreating the same pattern. Before Dieting exists to investigate that question. Whether you've tried countless diets or you're simply tired of blaming yourself, this podcast offers a different place to begin. Not by asking what's wrong with you, but by asking what conditions make this eating necessary. These questions are worth asking before you begin another diet. That's what Before Dieting is here to investigate.

  1. 5d ago

    Judith's story - Relief Eating vs Comfort Eating

    Judith was good at dieting. An engineer by profession, she liked order, research and understanding how things worked. She could learn the rules of a diet and apply considerable discipline to following them. What she couldn't understand was why relief eating kept returning. From the outside, the pattern could easily be interpreted as self-sabotage. Judith would lose weight, people would begin commenting on how good she looked, her eating would change and eventually the weight would return. But what happens when we stop looking only at the eating and examine the whole repeating pattern? In this episode of Before Dieting, I return to Judith's story and use a systems-thinking lens to go much further than we did the first time. We follow connections between her childhood experience of food, limited agency in the kitchen, private comfort, visibility, dieting and adult relief eating. We also examine the counterintuitive possibility that something Judith desperately wanted to change had also acquired a useful function within her system. You'll hear about the elastic band effect, and how a solution can work in the short term while creating pressure that eventually pulls the system back towards its previous state. We also look at dieting as a fix that fails: something capable of producing weight loss without necessarily changing the conditions involved in its return. Judith's story is particular to Judith. It isn't offered as an explanation for anybody else's weight or eating. Instead, it shows what can become visible when repeated behaviour is examined as part of a larger system rather than treated as an isolated failure of control. If you've spent years applying increasingly simple solutions to eating or weight that keeps returning, this episode offers another place to look. Weighting for Happiness® Diets change what you eat. Diagnostics reveal why you eat. See how understanding your weight ecosystem will help manage weight regain, OR copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-and-diet-history-diagnostic You can read my Blog Post here, OR copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/weight-regain-relief-or-comfort-eating

  2. Sep 29

    Melissa's Story - When chocolate is the Solution not the Problem.

    In today’s episode, you’ll hear Melissa’s food story and the insight she gained from examining her long-term weight struggle, using the iceberg model. “Chocolate wasn’t and isn’t her problem; it is her solution. As a child it was the only comfort in a home that was never safe. And now as an adult that solution sits beneath the waterline, hard wired in to give relief in times of fear or overwhelm.” Using an iceberg as a visual aid can help us see the hidden layers beneath complex challenges like weight loss. It shows why the obvious solutions of dieting and calorie-cutting, only work temporarily as they don’t address the root cause of excess weight. Melissa, is a 49-year-old tech support specialist and mother of two, who has battled weight since her second child was born. Despite countless diets, she found herself stuck in a loop, losing and regaining weight, believing chocolate was the reason. But when we mapped her patterns and traced her chocolate eating back to childhood, Melissa realised it wasn’t just about taste, it was about safety and comfort in a home marred by violence. Through Melissa’s story you’ll see that the path to permanent weight loss begins by turning the iceberg upside-down and finding the root cause, before starting another diet. Ready to discover your own eating system? Visit Weighting for Happiness to start your discovery using the Weight EcoSystem. or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic First Published on September 2, 2025 at 16:28

  3. Sep 22

    Weight Regain: The Frame We’re Using Is Too Small - Amy's Story

    What does a thirteen-year-old secretly taking food from the pantry tell us about her eating? On its own, it seems easy to explain. But Amy’s story changes as more information comes into view. She remembers being constantly hungry. Her food was restricted from childhood. Her dinner was served on a plate barely bigger than a saucer. She wasn’t given pocket money because of concerns she would spend it on food. Then, at eighteen, she left home determined that nobody would ever tell her what she could and couldn’t eat again. The secret eating hasn’t changed. What changes is the frame around it, and with that, what becomes available to explain it. In Episode 62 of Before Dieting, Bronwyn uses Amy’s story to introduce an important idea from systems thinking: the boundary we draw around a problem determines what information we include in our investigation and what we leave outside it. Weight regain is usually examined within a very tight frame: what was eaten, how much was eaten, whether the diet was followed and when it stopped. Those facts matter, but they can describe what happened without explaining the eating that produced it. Amy’s story shows why putting more context around eating can change an explanation without changing a single fact. In this episode: Why apparently straightforward eating behaviour can become less straightforward when more context is included What Amy’s childhood hunger, food restriction and limited access to food add to the story of her secret eating Why food freedom at eighteen meant something different when viewed alongside what came before it How a systems-thinking boundary determines what becomes available for explanation Why widening the frame doesn’t mean calories become irrelevant The important difference between describing eating and explaining it Why a factual account of weight regain isn’t necessarily a sufficient explanation Start with Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem: If Before Dieting has you thinking there’s more to your story than calories in and out, the Weight Ecosystem gives you the questions and pathway to begin reframing your weight regain. Start with Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem: If Before Dieting has you thinking there’s more to your story than calories in and out, Understanding Your Weight Ecosystem gives you the questions and pathway to begin reframing your own weight regain. Or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic Read the Blog or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/weight-regain-the-frame-is-too-small

  4. Sep 15

    If You’re Only Looking at Your Last Diet, You’re Missing the Story

    Karen described herself as a “great diet starter”. She had tried Weight Watchers twice, intermittent fasting, meal replacements and so many other diets she could no longer remember their names. More recently, she had stopped eating breakfast, hoping that removing a meal would make losing weight easier. Some days, after skipping breakfast, she found herself at the vending machine at work buying two or three chocolate bars to get through to dinner. Karen was approaching fifty and the diets she had previously relied on to lose a few kilos were no longer producing the same results. Perimenopause seemed the obvious explanation. She wanted to lose a persistent 20 kilograms and she felt increasingly urgent about doing it. Her mother was living with complications from type 2 diabetes and Karen was worried about where her own weight might take her. There was plenty of information available about what Karen was doing now. We could have tracked her food, calories, weight or the chocolate bars from the vending machine. But Karen didn’t have a tracking problem. She had decades of weight and dieting history that she had never looked at as a whole. In this episode of Before Dieting, I look at the difference between tracking what is happening now and charting what has happened across time. The most recent diet gives us a snapshot. A weight and dieting history gives us a different view, one that can reveal repetition, changes and turning points that are difficult to see when each attempt is treated as a separate event. Karen thought the important question was why her diets had stopped working as she approached fifty. Going back through her history raised a different one: how long had this pattern actually been developing? If you have spent years starting diets, losing weight and eventually starting again, your history isn’t irrelevant information from the past. It may contain some of the most useful evidence you have. In this episode: • Why the latest diet gives us only a snapshot of a repeating problem • Karen’s long history of dieting and her persistent 20 kilograms • What happened when skipping breakfast collided with the working day • Why Karen attributed her changing results to perimenopause • The difference between tracking calories, food and weight and charting a history across time • What becomes visible when individual weight-loss attempts are viewed together • Why going back through your weight and dieting history can change the problem you think you are trying to solve Start with your Weight & Dieting History If you have regained weight more than once, you already have a history worth examining. The Weight & Dieting History diagnostic gives you a structured way to bring that evidence together so you can see the pattern across time rather than judging another attempt in isolation.OR Copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-and-diet-history-diagnostic Read the Blog or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/looking-at-your-last-diet-your-missing-the-story

  5. Sep 8

    Weight Regain: Looking Beyond Calories and Willpower

    For the next eight episodes of Before Dieting, Bronwyn is taking a closer look at women’s experiences of eating and repeated weight regain, using stories women have shared with her over the years. These are the parts of women’s food and weight stories that rarely make it into conversations about weight loss: hiding and sneaking food, eating late at night when no one else is around, feeling torn between wanting to lose weight and desperately wanting the relief that eating can provide. Using a systems-thinking lens, Bronwyn will examine what surrounds these experiences, what repeats and what becomes visible when more of a woman’s life is put back around her eating. The aim isn’t to turn each story into a neat explanation. It’s to resist jumping to conclusions before there is enough evidence to support them. Because after years of losing and regaining weight, I fell off the wagon or I know what to do, I just don’t do it simply isn’t enough of an explanation. There is much more to investigate. If Before Dieting has started to loosen the idea that your weight is simply about calories and dieting, start turning some of this thinking towards your own story with the Weight Ecosystem. Or copy/paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic If you prefer you can read my Blog or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/repeated-weight-regain-looking-beyond-calories-and-willpower

  6. Aug 31

    SMART Goals and Weight Regain

    Weight goals can look remarkably clear. Lose ten kilos. Get back to 70 kilos. Fit into a particular clothing size. Free download: Weight Goal Worksheet to discover your weight goals and how they work https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-goal-worksheet But a precise weight goal doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve clearly defined the problem we’re trying to solve. In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn looks at what can sit underneath a numerical weight goal, from wanting greater confidence or better health to hoping weight loss will change how we feel about our body. Once those outcomes become attached to a number on the scales, very different problems can start to look as though they have the same solution. The episode also examines SMART goals and an important limitation: making a goal more specific and measurable can make it more precise, but it can’t tell us whether we’re solving the right problem. When repeated weight regain is a complex problem, reducing it to a numerical target can make a simple solution, usually another diet, look more appropriate than it really is. Before deciding what the next number on the scales should be, this episode offers a different place to begin: understanding what you actually expect weight loss to change, and whether weight loss can deliver it. Looking to solve a complex weight regain problem, take a look at how seeing your weight ecosystem can assist. or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/weight-ecosystem-diagnostic

  7. Aug 25

    Repeated Weight Regain Is a Complex Problem

    Repeated Weight Regain Is a Complex Problem Not all problems behave in the same way. Some are simple, some are complicated, and some are complex. The distinction matters because the type of problem determines the kind of solution that is likely to work. Repeated weight regain has the characteristics of a complex problem. It isn't simply that there are many factors involved. Those factors interact, and attempts to change one part can alter the conditions surrounding another. This becomes particularly important when weight loss and regain have happened more than once. Each attempt becomes part of the history brought to the next, turning what can look like another isolated weight problem into a repeating pattern. In this episode of Before Dieting, Bronwyn uses the three types of problems to show why repeated weight regain needs a different problem-solving approach, and why understanding the problem needs to come before choosing another solution. In this episode: The difference between simple, complicated and complex problemsWhat makes a problem complexWhy recurrence changes the nature of a weight problemHow previous attempts become part of the problem being investigatedWhy complex problems require a different approach to solving them Weight regain isn't a simple overeating problem with a simple dieting solution. Free download: The Three Types of Problems Cheat Sheet provides a quick visual guide to the distinctions discussed in this episode. or copy and paste the link: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/pod-asset Read my Blog Article here or copy and paste the link: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/solving-repeated-weight-regain

  8. Aug 18

    Interview with Lanette Helene - Pilates and being in your body

    Pilates, body awareness and getting back into your bodyDownload the free instructional sheet here or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/Pilates What does it actually mean to be in your body? In this episode, I’m joined by experienced Pilates practitioner Lanette Helene to explore body awareness, movement and the physical patterns women accumulate over time. This isn't about Pilates for weight loss. We talk about why women can become disconnected from their bodies, how midlife and menopause can change movement, strength and mobility, and why simply stretching tighter muscles isn't always the answer. Lanette also explains what Pilates actually is, why it treats the body as an interconnected system, what to look for when choosing a Pilates studio, and some simple things you can do to improve body awareness in everyday life. Four takeaways Your body works as a whole. A problem in one area may be connected to what is happening elsewhere.Body awareness can be rebuilt. Precise attention to breathing and movement can reconnect you with parts of your body you've stopped noticing.Midlife changes what your body needs. Movement, mobility and strength become increasingly important.Good instruction matters. If you're new to Pilates, Lanette recommends beginning with individual assessment and instruction. Lanette shares a simple Toe Scrunch exercise for working the feet, toes and ankles. Download the free instructional sheet here or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/Pilates To visit Pilates Canberra, or copy and paste the link below: https://www.pilatescanberra.com.au/ Read the Blog here: or copy and paste the link below: https://www.weightingforhappiness.com.au/post/back-in-your-body

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About

Investigating Weight Regain Before You Try to Fix It. If you've spent years losing weight, regaining it, and wondering why the same pattern keeps repeating, this podcast is for you. Before Dieting is an investigative podcast from the Weighting for Happiness Project. Using women's experiences as a starting point, each episode investigates a different part of the weight ecosystem, revealing connections between seemingly unrelated experiences and the way we eat. Each episode replaces judgement with understanding, helping you see familiar experiences in a completely different way. The Weighting for Happiness Project is built on one simple distinction: Weight loss and weight regain are different problems. Many women have proved they can lose weight. The unanswered question is what keeps recreating the same pattern. Before Dieting exists to investigate that question. Whether you've tried countless diets or you're simply tired of blaming yourself, this podcast offers a different place to begin. Not by asking what's wrong with you, but by asking what conditions make this eating necessary. These questions are worth asking before you begin another diet. That's what Before Dieting is here to investigate.

Information

  • Creator
    Bronwyn Fletcher
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    64
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Before Dieting...